public safety warning

I don't usually repeat/forward this kind of information, but this one caught my attention and I felt obligated to do something to pass it along - these incidents seem to be happening to many people I know:

Public Safety Warning: Mad Procrastinators at Large.

While not normally known to be particularly vicious, a virulent strain of procrastinator attacks has outbroken recently. Of most concern with this particular strain is the incubation period. The victim may or may not know that the long, detailed conversation he is having with the procrastinator was procrastination until it's too late to gracefully extract himself from the conversation. At this level of entanglement the stock bag of excuses (needing to "wash the hair" and so on) fall short and the victim is stuck helplessly "ooh", "ahhh" and "uh-huhhing" until finally falling over from complete exhaustion. Fortunately this stage brings on the only behavior that's been known to slow the progression of the condition: absolute silence on the part of the victim.

If you are contacted by a suspected procrastinator, please make no response whatever and immediately report the encounter to the authorities. Any details you can provide (date/time of contact, conversational topic attempted) will be of use in informing other potential victims before it's too late.

Running list of conversational topics that may indicate the unwelcome advances of a procrastinator:

• backpacking (gear, destinations, routes, shoes)
• books
• travel
  
• the state of health care
• using "Lean" methodologies to improve health care delivery
• adult education
• organizational knowledge management
• wikis, blogs, RSS
• phooning
• youtube
  
• cooking
• baking
• CS Lewis
• politics
• religion
• world peace

Please - let me know if there are any topics you've heard of that were missed in the above article! (photo from fartoolittleattention on flickr)